'No vacancy' for political Web ads

The Internet seems endless — like an infinite universe of gigabytes for tweets, Facebook photos and kitten videos.

But for one key commodity — political advertising — the Web is about to run out of room, at least on the popular video sites that campaigns in some swing states care about most.

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And that’s got ad buyers for campaigns fretting the way they used to about TV and radio space: Whoever snaps up those last few prime-time spots in the final weeks of the campaign shuts the other guy out.

Search ads and display ads are more plentiful and are still available to campaigns. The ads in question are those 15- and 30-second spots that automatically play before videos on YouTube, Yahoo, AOL and other sites — and they’re either sold out in some markets or will be auctioned off at record prices, insiders tell POLITICO.

“There has been incredibly strong demand for online video advertising inventory in targeted states, so there is virtually no 30-second inventory left for the fall,” said Rob Saliterman, head of Republican advertising outreach for Google, which owns YouTube. Campaigns are “buying it up for September and October and the first week of November.”

Kari Chisholm of Mandate Media feels the pain in Nevada, where the firm is handling online strategy for Democrat John Oceguera’s bid to unseat Republican Rep. Joe Heck. Oceguera’s campaign has not reserved any of these prime-time online ads, known as “pre-roll,” because it didn’t know about the shortage, Chisholm said.

“It’s a fairly narrow audience, and we’re all trying to run through the same door at the same time,” said Chisholm, who was unaware that Google allowed reserved buys.

Las Vegas is a key market in Nevada, where a close U.S. Senate race and two competitive House races are competing for Internet ad time with the presidential campaigns. Super PACs, along with the campaigns of President Barack Obama and GOP hopeful Mitt Romney, long ago snapped up most of the available fall online pre-roll.

Space is limited because YouTube and other Web video providers, including Yahoo and AOL, enable advertisers to place spots to target potential voters either by category — news or politics, for example — or by ZIP code, meaning that the most desirable categories or geographic locations go quickly.

The sites estimate how many plays — or “impressions” in ad speak — they expect for videos viewed by the desirable demographics.

Advertisers, then, can buy those spaces ahead of time. Whatever’s left is sold as it becomes available in real time and, thus, becomes exponentially more expensive.

By late October, consultants predict, available space could cost more than $50 per 1,000 impressions, three times the norm, in battleground states like Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.

Whatever wasn’t bought by the super PACs and the national campaigns in Nevada was reserved by the Senate campaigns. Ron Steslow, digital strategist for Republican Sen. Dean Heller, who faces Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), started buying pre-roll for the fall in March.

“Even then, a lot of the inventory was eaten up, but we got what we wanted,” said Steslow, whose firm Soapbox Strategic encountered similar issues buying pre-roll for Republican candidates targeted in Wisconsin recall elections. “There wasn’t a whole lot left in Nevada after we were done, though, and especially not in the demographics everyone wants.”